A Plan for Evaluating Public Schools

Posted by on March 20, 2011

A little caution

The first major independent study of D.C. school reform has concluded that rising standardized test scores are of limited value in determining whether students are actually learning more, The Washington Post reports. The study from the National Research Council states that “Looking at test scores should be only a first step — not an endpoint — in considering questions about student achievement, or even more broadly, about student learning.” The report is the first in a series of evaluations required by the 2007 law that placed the city’s public schools under mayoral control, and argues that while the city has made “a good faith effort” to implement the Public Education Reform Amendment Act, it is premature to draw sweeping conclusions about its effect on student achievement. Researchers said the city must develop a more sophisticated capacity to track individual students who shift from traditional public schools to charter schools, or in some cases drop out of the system entirely. The city also needs a firmer grasp of rapidly changing neighborhood demographics and their impact on academics. “In the meantime, naive aggregate comparison of test scores among race-ethnic groups in the District should be interpreted critically and cautiously,” the study said.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/04/AR2011030402414.html?wprss=rss_education

See the report: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13114